HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!

Grade 3 team theme...Wizard of OZ. Here are some pics of the spook alley as promised.  Man that lion gets some air haha.

Pumpkin carving contests, Halloween Caroling and Mental Math :)

Tomorrow is Halloween and I am beyond excited. First my costume is going to be so fun, Second the spook alley I was involved with will be excellent and Thirdly we will be having a parade and party and who does not like a parade and party?

Today however was prep for these things and so was very busy. We marched to the grade 1 classes singing our Halloween Carol the 13 nights of Halloween and checked out the sweet pumpkin carving contest. The work the kids (and their parents)  did was very impressive.

Tomorrow I will be posting a few shots of the Spook Alley and some party pics. Happy Halloween Everyone. Have a great Halloween Eve.

Cheers

Mr.G

P.S Check out the pictures of the pumpkin carving contest and jump over to the Language Arts section to take a look at the book and posters we made to sing our carol.

Missed the kids LOVE A GOOD Sub report

Today I was in meetings doing some of the other work teachers get to do. My kids had a busy day making posters to help teach a new song to the grade ones "The 13 night of Halloween". The posters turned out really well. The kids also started their Halloween stories. Hopefully we can get those finished tomorrow. Some great pumpkins have been turned in for the carving contest and I will post a few tomorrow. We are also making a spook alley and more pictures will come. Happy Halloween Eve Eve. Only one more school day before my favorite holiday :)

Cheers

Mr.G

This is Halloween, Halloween

Busy week with Halloween on Thursday and then Remembrance Day next week there will be some interruption to our routine but the kids can use a break to have a little fun right?  :) Wednesday is the Halloween parade so that will be a blast. I will be posting a picture of my costume on Wednesday. The other grade 3 teachers and I have decided to go as a theme...  The kids are writing a Halloween themed story this week as well as learning  "The 13 Nights of Halloween" it is a spin on the 12 days of Christmas. We are going to teach it to the grade 1 students this week so big posters will be needed. Should be a fun week. Stay tuned for more :)

Friday Fun Day

We worked our little pencil crayons to stubs today but accomplished a lot of cool art. We talked story plot and character development in Language Arts and then had a fun time experimenting with perspective and Jack O Lanterns.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Mr.G

Building and Budget Debates

Today was a brilliantly fun day. We took a break from math and dove right into our next science unit on building structures. Today we tackled the VASE. With silk flowers in hand and a ton of recycling we created some truly beautiful pieces of modern art. Scissors proved to be a foe for some but in the end we crafted some pretty cool things.

Social Studies was the host of a budget debate for our Halloween party. It was a complete blast. THe students opted to save the budget by amending some of it to make room for donations to save themselves some beans. The motion passed with a majority support :)

Take a look at the science page to get the tour of our latest creations.

-Mr.G

Wednesday has arrived and I am joining the choir!

We have a few choir kids in the class and I will be joining them for a Remembrance Day program on the morning of the 7th of November :)

We have had the most amazing day with the kids working very hard and getting a lot accomplished. In math we were working on number expressions and had some great Mathamagician moments. One of the kids created a number expression for 78 by breaking it into 16+14+15+15+5+5+4+4. We had a lot more great math examples.

We are nearly finished our autobiographies and posters on children's rights.

Great week so far (minus all the snow) :)

Snowy Snowy Day

Lots missing today but there is over 2 foot drifts that just appeared over night! If we are staying home read a good book :) Be safe and dress for the weather. An update of the days activities will come later :)

The weather outside is frightful but grade 3 is delightful!

Snow ugh at least it held off until after my birthday haha. Today was a great day in grade 3. The kids started their comic strips that focus on an article from the rights of a child document. Which are turning out great. We discussed our next Science unit as well and we plan on building a few things in the coming days and weeks.

In math we are doing mental math which is really fun to watch and see kids develop their own strategies. In the weeks to come we will be diving right into addition and subtraction in our journey to further become Mathamagicians.

Gizmo is shedding again it seems, we are so proud haha.

Just a reminder we can still use your recycling to help us build some items in science. We are in need of paper towel or even toilet paper rolls if you have clean ones kicking around that we could use that would be great!

-Cheers
Mr.G

Happy Birthday and Weekend!

My birthday is on Sunday so we had cupcakes and it was super fun.

This morning started out with a great finish to our Social Studies lesson. We came up with a list of things through voting and motions brought forward by members of our political parties to bring to our Halloween party. The list is long but agreed upon by the whole class so it was neat to see what they valued for treats and what they did not. Just an FYI celery sticks were on the chopping block but survived the vote :) Halloween Candy was not so lucky haha

We practiced how to operate by consensus and planned a trip to a new plant. We had to a list of 10 experts and told the kids we had to take it down to 5. Great debate raged about if there is a need for a religious leader or a musician, who is better to have around an engineer or a carpenter. Then some kids asked if their parents can come and that changed the whole conversation because of the skills their parents could offer.

We then decided it would be fun to try and describe what our partners look liked when eating a Warhead sour candy. We laughed and had a lot of fun. Some kids even drew what their face would look like if they were shaking. It was very funny :)


We had a great week and hope everyone has a great weekend.

-Mr.G

Great day all around!

I really can't explain how much faster a great day zooms by. Our Math lesson today turned into working with adding by doing a closed number line. We practiced practiced and practiced. The idea was using the number line to do addition to help with subtraction. After we practiced practiced practiced i set the kids lose to try it themselves and then some very cool math work and a new mathamagician was crowned. One of the kids created her own strategy using the number line and subtracting rather than adding and nailed it :) It was very cool.

Social Studies which has become one of the students favourite things was all about governments and how we have to provide services. In "government mode" the kids play roles like Prime Minister or Minister of Finance and Opposition party leaders and debate and vote. We are planning our Halloween party currently and had to discuss if we should raise our taxes to inflate our budget haha. The debate continues on.

Friday tomorrow and the kids will tell you in will be 2 days until my birthday. We have been counting down all week.

Cheers,

-Mr.G

Gizmo is shedding and other cool stuff

Well our little Gecko is growing up. Gizmo has had his/her first shed :) Today Gizmo pigged out on a mealworms to celebrate the occasion. We have continued our journey to become Mental Math Masters and practiced 4 new strategies. This afternoon we are going to be looking at commutative property it should be fun. We are going to knock down some Domino walls and read a bit of our great book.

Mr.G

Missed my first post of the year :(

Yesterday was so busy and fun we forgot to post the adventures of the day. Today has been equally busy. The kids tested out trusses yesterday and our popsicle sticks held a lot of weight, it was also a lot of fun to see them come crashing down.

We have started a new adventure in Math and mathamagicians are being born daily. It is super fun to be a part of.

Social Studies has been dedicated to chatting about the right of children and I will hopefully post some cool stuff later this week or early next.

Our autobiographies are coming along nicely and some finished work will be posted by the weekend :)

Happy Tuesday

Mr.Gilson

Goodbye Place Value Unit we will miss you :)

Place Value and Numbers to 1000 test today and we all felt pretty good about it :) We worked on our art projects and had a rather chilled out day after we finished the test. A lot of the kids appreciated a brain break and so did I :) Check out the Bubble Blowing assignment under the art show. Here is a quick look.

 Have a great weekend!

-Mr.G

We can be like Superman

   Today was a fantastic day! The day started off in its normal fashion. Reading comprehension is a part of our normal routine and the topic of our passage today was Christopher and Dana Reeve. It was interesting talking about them and their desire to help those who could not help themselves. Our intended Social Studies lesson was temporarily hijacked by news we might have the opportunity to help out an orphanage in Uganda. We discussed life in Africa and why there are so many orphans and even what an orphan is. Kids already have started coming up with ideas of how we can help which was really awesome to see. One of the kids even said, "Mr.G it is like that guy we read about this morning, we will be helping people that can't help themselves."

   Then our intended lesson began and as  we are studying how decisions are made in communities the kids have formed their own political parties and we have a mock question period where we all play roles. We have a Speaker of the House (ME) and a Prime Minister as well as opposition parties and ministers of Finance, Justice, Industry and Health. Today our Prime Minister appointed her cabinet and we discussed how communities are kept safe. We discussed Bylaws as a way to keep people safe as well as generate income. The kids voted on the fines that would be charged to those who violated the bylaws. It was fantastic and fun. Some days are bumpy but days like today make you forget the bumps! Friday tomorrow and then we are done for the week. Woohoo!

-Mr.G

Work Hard Play Hard

So the day started out with the kids right on track for a great day. Came back from my PLC meeting to a room full of quiet readers it was quite the treat. We then flew into Number Expressions (check out the math page) and worked with coins to help us understand. Then we were called down to compete in the Cross Country run. It was very cold out but the kids ran and did a great job. After wards we practice sentence ordering by fixing a mixed up paragraph and chewed some bubble gum :) The science lesson did not start off working properly but in the end falling weights took out a chunk of desk and we had a great day! Autobiography planning begins tomorrow and then some math review. Big test Friday :)

-Mr.G

Introducing....

     Well after a long democratic process and much debate we have settled on a name for our newest classmate...Gizmo! The students have elected a classroom Prime Minister and she along with her cabinet decided on the name and with no argument from the opposition parties Gizmo was declared the winner.

      On top of all that excitement we had a fantastic busy day of Math and Language Arts. We have more to go but definitely getting a routine down and we should hopefully be moving on to new topics by weeks end. Enjoy a few pictures of Gizmo (Leopard Gecko)

Will turkey make us tired tomorrow?

We have a very busy week ahead of us in grade 3. We will be finishing our current math unit if all goes well. Continuing looking at government and finishing it up in Social Studies. Beginning a new writing focus in LA and continuing to work on testing materials in Science. All this and we have a new Leopard Gecko to name (Mrs.G thinks Gilbert is good but we run a democracy in our class) and Guided Reading to start and Math RTI groups all kicking off this week! There will be pictures up tomorrow afternoon or evening of all the fun things happening. Thanks for reading. Let the short week begin!

-Mr.G

Well we now have a pet

The kids are going to love it :)

Democracy is a beautiful thing

Today a leader was elected and we all had a great time practicing democracy. We had student council nominations and speeches this morning and the kids all listened while the Div. II kids that wanted to be in the council gave their speeches. I am lucky enough to be the staff liaison to the student council and look very much forward to the adventure and good deeds we will be doing as part of the community. When I got back to class my super EA Mrs. R was giving the kids a run down on how democracy works and this led to me deciding to bump up our work and begin discussions on our classroom government and we elected (after a third set of ballots) a Prime Minister and 2 leaders of opposition parties. Cabinets and ministers will be decided on Tuesday when we return from Thanksgiving. I hope everyone has a great long weekend. Spending tomorrow in meetings and then HOPEFULLY getting our classroom pet :) STAY TUNED!

-Mr.G

Snow, rain, and puff wheat

Ok busy day. Student council is going to be a blast and tomorrow we are video broadcasting messages out to the school. Should be wicked fun. In class today we worked on estimating using referents and building testing materials.

In math we had multiple mathamagicians coming up with some great ideas for how to use referents to measure Jelly Beans, Jubejubes, Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs and Shreddies. Some were bang on while others not so much. It will be a work in progress but we had some fun and maybe learned a little :)

Science was a blast the kids built cubes with toothpicks and we experimented with various connecting materials. Plasticine, Marshmallows and Puff Wheat served as our connecting materials. Much to all of our surprise the plasticine was not the winner of our challenge. The Puff Wheat was the champion of the day holding over 300 grams on its tiny toothpick frame. Check it out below. One more day and then we are off for LONG weekend! TOmorrow look for some gratitude posts from the Superheroes of Grade 3!

-Mr.G

Piles of books, a referendum, and a new student

Full day equals fun day. Started the morning sitting on the classroom floor organizing books with piles all around me and a little Battle Born blasting ( get that CD). New student came in and we started getting him settled. We played some run ball with cold north winds blowing and we debated the merits of the 1995 referendum. Now this was by no means a critical thinking conversation as it ended with us having our own referendum on the status of the prize box but I think some of the kids really thought it was interesting. We are gearing up for Student Council elections so the class are really buying into this government stuff. Early night tonight, up early for morning supervision and then what is shaping up to be a fun lesson on estimation. Time will tell.

Cheers,

Mr.G

Monday...New Desks and a lot of fun

The kids loved the new seating arrangement this morning. Very excited to have a change of pace and I LOVE groups. The possibilities for discussion and investigation in Math, Science and Social Studies are endless. We had a great discussion on the qualities of a leader and the kids wrote small pieces on the leader of their homes. One student remarked, "My mom is for sure the leader, all my dad does is watch TV." I asked him to clarify but he just repeated that his mom does everything including making apple juice which he thought was awesome :) In science we tried to make cubes with paper clip bracers....it was a bit difficult and plasticine by far was the best material the kids were pumped when we supported over 1 pound with straws and a bit of plasticine. The levelling of the classroom library is coming closer to completing and progress will be posted later this week. Tomorrow we have a little math quiz in the afternoon and then we are holding a referendum on how often the store should be available to the students. I am even going to talk about Quebec :) Party time in grade 3. Here are a few pictures of the new set up.

New group set up 

Will be a listening station for audio books 

Will house our classroom pets

Until tomorrow

-Mr.G